sorry, i should've said a 190KB-word "Word" document. the file size is about 3MB.

interesting. i found the sources.xml file at

C:\Users\%Username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Bibl iography

decided to make a copy of the working file to play with, then went back
to the above location to delete the .xml and...it was gone? no change
in behavior when updating references in the working or copy files. i have a dumb
(text) copy of the references.

being the functional equivalent of a novice user, i'll have to take the time to
learn how to run macros to try your solution and get back to you. Thanks much.

on another note: where would one look for a MS Word pro who could solve problems like this as a service?